I had long felt a real dread towards the 2024 election. It literally started shortly after Biden's presidency, when Trump held another of his rallies.
Right at that moment, I knew that the political drama surrounding Trump was not over. If there was one moment when I began to dread this year, and this particular election, that was it.
Next came four long years unlike any other that we have seen. A former president seemed to dominate the news cycle more than the sitting president did, often times. Despite all that we saw, it was clear that Trump's political career was far from done. Instead of fading from public view, like every other losing presidential nominee from both major parties had done in the past (at least in my lifetime), Trump seemed to get more exposure than ever.
As this election neared, that sense of dread grew more intense. Compounding that was the strangeness of once again being one of the few people who simply could not share the optimism that it seemed most of my friends and more or less like-minded people had. It seemed that most of them felt a little too sure that Trump would not win another term, that his presidency was some sort of an aberration.
Despite Biden having won the 2020 election by over seven million votes, he only narrowly beat out Trump in many of the swing states, which he of course needed to clinch the Electoral College requirements. Very quickly, Biden was blamed for things which were largely out of his control, such as the frankly predictable inflation following the global coronavirus shutdown, as well as the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan (which it seems most people have forgotten had been Trump's timeline). Biden's poll numbers were simply never encouraging. So I felt worried long before his disastrous debate performance.
For a little while, it seemed that Kamala Harris had some real momentum. Early on after replacing Biden, she seemed like she just might be capable of capitalizing on that momentum, and maybe even opening up a decent lead.
Then it went away in September, rather inexplicably.
From that point on, those interior alarms from that old sense of dread began to grow. Not for the first time, I began to dread the election. It suddenly felt like it we were racing towards it.
Before you knew it, Election Day was here. And while I feared it would result in a win for Trump, the numbers were more somehow more discouraging than even my admittedly skeptical expectations would have led me to believe. At the very least, I thought that those supposed battleground states would really be too close to call. But it was clear by midnight at latest that she was going to lose almost all of them. She lost Pennsylvania by a surprisingly wide margin. Ditto with Michigan. And Nevada. And North Carolina. And Wisconsin.
Also, this time she did not even win the popular majority. For the first time, an outright majority of voters went for Trump.
Meanwhile, both the House and Senate appear to have gone to the Republicans. That means that Trump will have both Congress and the Supreme Court on his side.
Let's face it: the American people have spoken. It was not the result I wanted. However, this was not quite as shocking as 2016. I had a sinking feel in my gut back then, too. But when the election turned out as it did, it still came as a shock. That was not the case this time around. There was less shock value this time around. But what it lacked in shock value, it made up for in terms of hos depressing these results were.
Sure enough, now we will get a second Trump presidency. Not surprisingly, there is a large measure of despair from many of the people who strongly opposed him. Some are expressing despair for what is considered an existential threat to our fragile American democracy.
Who am I to argue?
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